I strongly believe that I'm going to go full circle and end up at that sort of size. Admittedly, when I was small I didn't understand much about knife design, and when I was very small I was a prat and used to throw knives and dig in the ground with them and that sort of kiddie stuff, but 6” Sheffield Bowies [meh] and KA-BAR type things made me happy. Later, I did come to the understanding that they were crap as cutting instruments and lacked any wallop for chopping. For one reason or another since then I've mostly overlooked that size range unless I wanted something that could stab well, preferring instead something about 4” that cuts amazingly well teamed with a heavy hitter of some description............................................ Over time though I have really lost interest in setting fire to stuff so the big ole wood processors seldom get an airing. And as for building shelters and that, well I've done so many I've definitely got the “dog returning to it's own vomit” feeling about them now. In fact, given that subtards can be trained to make them PDQ I'm amazed they held my interest for so long. Barring the two or three times a year when I want to build a hide [blind] and need to move some brambles and a few bits of thin wood, in which case I mostly use secateurs anyway, I seldom do that kind of stuff now unless I'm demonstrating. Even then the big chopper is a convenience feature and far from a necessity, and that bit of convenience has to be offset against carrying the brute.…..........................................I can see why neo-bushcrafters here have their little 4” FB carving knives and a big chopper, what they do isn't very estranged from going to the end of the garden with an billhook and chisel and having a go a carving clothes pegs or a bird table that looks like a spoon, but it is very same. And there does come a point at which you look at the nth twig with a notch cut in it and think “I could do that with any knife in Tesco”. So that gets me to thinking about the little knives too. Moras and Hultafors are supposed to cut great, better than many homemade knives even because they are so thin, yet I've never seen one that will out cut a Victorinox kitchen knife on any material. And that reminds me of all the slippies from back in the day that were used to carve very functional and sometimes very elaborate things. Now you're supposed to use a neo-bushcraft FB with prescribed blade length and shape and palm width handle and all that crap. Nah, that's never been for me, I never bought into it. As they say, “life is what is really happening whilst you are making other plans”.................................................... Now my agenda has changed and I have different priorities I need my cutting tools to have a different range. About 6” is an ideal ceiling size for everything I could reasonable expect to encounter. If I go on a vacation to somewhere remote abroad I'll think again on a case by case basis, but for English speaking countries that's the limit. Simultaneously, the other end of my range has shifted down in size a lot too. In fact, I'm still enjoying a gloat that only a week ago in a potato peeling race I could out carve my mate with his neo-bushcrafter thing 3:1 using a humble lambsfoot slippie. So what does the future hold? I can envisage a time quite clearly where I am going to be using the best of old school designs of a 6” general purpose do it all knife but in modern materials along with a slippie and that's it. And the closer that its to a stainless wear resistant tough high traction version of a Marbles Expert the better I'll like it. I'm very nearly there already.
